Sweet and Sour in Boston

Another rundown of my thoughts as we watched Top Chef:

- To honor the quickest chef in all of Top Chef, they let Hung be the quickest guest judge ever. Seriously, he was on for what...2 mins? I was completely wrong about this quickfire challenge too. Having Hung on, I assumed it would be a kosher/halal food type of challenge, but instead it was a pseudo tribute to him for his smurfland cereal quickfire and the chefs had to use canned goods and make a meal in 15 minutes. Well, the snobbery of the chefs come out. "I never cook with anything not fresh" "This is a mess, Jesus Christ". Look guys...the great skill of a chef is making something great from something not so great. The French took brains and other offal and made delicious sweetbreads. I'm sure if you guys wanted to be Top Chef, you can make something good out of some Hormel chili. (Which I love!)

- Jeff's dish was again majorly complex, but looked good. Him, Stefan, and Hosea were in the top 3, with Stefan winning. Hosea makes some comment about how he didn't want to give Stefan some spam because Stefan's "boyfriend" didn't let him have some artichokes or something like that. Talk about cranky pants...

- Radhika, Jamie and Leah were in the bottom 3 I believe. All there stuff looked like ass, so Hung probably chose wisely. Hung was a decent guest judge, albeit a brief one. He described what he liked and didn't like, which is good feedback.

- Jamie also calls Stefan Fabio's "boyfriend" and I have to wonder if this is cool or not. I remember a few years ago, there was this article talking about how the gay community was pissed that some sitcom (I can't remember, but I wanna say 2 and a Half Men) made some comments about the two lead male characters were boyfriends and how their reaction to it was offensive. I have to wonder if A) this group is that comfortable with each other and there is no fighting that they can joke around like that without pissing others off or B) that Stefan and Fabio being Euros mean you can call imply they are gay without being offensive. Imagine if instead of being two Euros, that Stefan and Fabio were Stereotypical American Frat Douchebag A and Stereotypical American Frat Douchebag B and the other cheftestants called them "boyfriends". They would flip out! "I ain't gay! I'll have sex with all the women right now to prove it! I like football and baseball!" The fact that Stefan and Fabio didn't even care and rolled with the jokes...I dig it.

- For the elimination they are all broken up into 3 teams: Team Pig (Jeff, Radhika, Fabio), Team Lamb (Leah, Hosea, Jersey) and Team Chicken (Crazy Eyes, Jamie, Stefan). I immediately think Team Pig is going to dominate and if Team Lamb ends up in the bottom, I will be forever happy because there's a good chance Leah or Jersey will get off my TV. Instead of going to Whole Foods, they go to Stone Barns Farm. This place was featured on a Bourdain show and I immediately wanted to go there. The fact that these chefs get to get the freshest of fresh ingredients with the "proteins" are cared for like crazy is great. The question is not what are they going to do with these great products, but how are these incompetent chefs going to screw up such great product. Dan Barber is the head chef and owner of the farm and he's a very likable guy. I'd love to eat his food one day.

- Team Pork cracked me up. Fabio's game plan was "No Indian, no over thinking, no Italian". This is hilarious. That's the major flaw of each of them, Radhika, Jeff and Fabio, respectively. They go with Fabio's ravioli with pesto, seared pork loin, Jeff's fried green tomatoes, grilled corn salad and a creme brulee desert. As they went over the menu, I thought immedietly that this was the team that was going to win. They were using the great produce they grabbed on the farm to make the pesto and the fried green tomatoes and they were lucky enough to get this beautiful pork to work with. How was I so wrong...

- Team chicken made roasted chicken, chicken cutlets, some sort of chicken soup and a tartlet made by the greatest pastry-chef in all of Top Chef history: Crazy Eyes. When they were going over there menu, Jamie did not want to do a roast chicken, calling it simple and boring...um, girl, have you never read any Thomas Keller or Daniel Boulod? A mark of a real chef, a great chef, is in making a roast chicken. It's simple, sure, but that's not the same as easy. Meaning, you don't need a whole lot to make it good, but you have to have good technique to make it amazing. I thought this was a brilliant idea by Stefan. You have the freshest of fresh chicken, why not cook it in the best way possible to showcase how great that chicken is: a roast. Hammersely in Boston is known for their roast chicken. That's not a bad thing to be known for at all. Of course the roast chicken was praised, as was Crazy Eyes' dessert. Looks like we have ourselves a winner.

- Team Lamb (or Team F Up) had...well they presented destroyed lamb and some sort of roasted potatoes and a berry trifle dessert. The lamb was absolutely destroyed. As Ariane was butchering it, I was screaming out on TV "Why are you letting Jersey butcher the lamb?!?!?!" It was painful to watch...then it was even worse to watch as she was tenderizing the poor meat...young lamb does not need to be tenderized! OMG!!!! The fact that Leah and Hosea let her do this is just as bad. Hosea even states that he can butcher really well...then do it man! Do it! Don't let Jersey ruin perfectly good meat! Hosea is starting to piss me off. I couldn't stand the whole Leah thing when that first started as one of those random clips in the middle of the show on like the 2nd episode. I couldn't stand it even more when they said that they both had significant others at home. I definitely can't stand it know that he's being blinded by the P and letting his work suffer for it. HOSEA!!! Don't put the P on a pedestal! Quit thinking about the P and think about the food! It's affecting your work when you should be one of the best cheftestants on this show, you are coming off mediocre. And let's be honest here...that specific P isn't all that worth it. Leah, I guess, is suppose to be the hot chick of this group...but it just ain't happening. Even with this so called great rack (which I'm still not seeing) the editing crew of Top Chef is not showcasing her in her bikini or taking off her shirt (like they did with Casey from season 3)...no, they are showing Jeff taking off his shirts. That's when you know there is no hot chick in this group. They'd rather show Jeff, a dude that is 120 pounds soaking wet, then any of the females. And you know the sad part? At least Casey could cook...in fact, she'd cook all of these females (and the males) under the table. So she had a great rack (albeit fake) and she could cook. This season they got ugly girls who can't cook. Congratulations Leah on being the skinniest girl at fat camp! Hoesa, quit thinking about the P and start cooking!

- Anyway, Team Chicken wins even though there were some tense moments between Stefan and Jamie. Carla deserved the win for having to deal with them both, but it's a team win. Team Pork is safe because even though they ruined the pork loin and Radhika did nothing, Team Lamb was such a disaster that it didn't matter. Now I'm happy. Ariane or Leah can go home and I won't have to see them again. It turns out to be Ariane and while I'm happy, I think she got screwed by Leah and Hosea. They totally set her up to take the fall, which isn't hard seeing as how incompetent she is, and they just come off looking like pricks. Ariane lasted a lot longer than I expected, and that shows you how bad this season's chefs are. And in class Jersey fashion, she calls out Leah and Hosea in her exit interview...all of a sudden you have a voice Jersey? Why didn't you say something to their face when it was happening? Ugh..so glad no more Jersey!

- Next week is restaurant wars and more shots of Leah and Hosea making out...egads!